A Heredity That I Now Finally Realize Is Me

By Cynthia Pratt

Hello children (of metaphor)! Last week we had Kristen evoking capital-F Father in their poem Catechism Connective. This week Cynthia is making us considers lower case fathers and mothers and inheritance. Her words rocked us like alien babes in our forever bassinets. We are so happy to file this poem in our trapper keeper!

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A Heredity That I Now Finally Realize Is Me

My father gave me the edge of a mean streak that never quite
hits anyone, but you and I know I could. Yes.

And from my mother, a penchant for words, some even beautiful,
but most, when I’m angry at you, they fall into muddy puddles. Yes.

Do I own myself at all? Imagine that I look like an alien from Mars,
or one of the deepest sea creatures, because of the body’s hooked scars. Yes.

Yes, the definition of me brings me up from the surface of my tantrum
when you can’t understand I don’t belong on that shelf you placed me. Yes,

I keep leaping off because I am woven into a tumble of spikes, that only
sometimes get unkinked enough to laugh at myself. I am funny. Yes,

like my father used to enact for me, telling a story on himself. I am him
now, and I use lovely, sharp words to describe my screwups. Yes, you say.

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About the hot poet: Cynthia Pratt's(she/her) poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Raven Chronicles, Feminist Theology Poetry, The Raven’s Perch, The Writing Disorder, The Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Dreich Magazine, Kestrel Journal and other publications, and published in multiple anthologies including in the anthology, I Sing the Salmon Home (2023). Her manuscript, Celestial Drift, was published in 2016. She is the first Poet Laureate of Lacey as of 2022. Find her at Cynthia-pratt-poet.net.

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THANK YOU CYNTHIA & THANK YOU READERS.

Stay safe, hold yourselves, see you next week with a new hot poet!